Parents: Is TV Really Making Your Lives Easier?

Technology makes our lives easier…unless it doesn’t. When a new laser surgery fixes your hernia with minimal invasion, technology is king. When someone steals your identity over the internet, you bemoan the lost days of pen and paper.

Last week a new study came out showing that just nine minutes of watching SpongeBob SquarePants  can cause short-term attention and learning problems in 4-year-olds. Previous research has linked TV-watching with long-term attention problems in children, but the new study suggests more immediate problems can occur after very little exposure.

I thought about how my daughter’s school asks us not to show media to them on school nights because the teachers actually notice a difference in of those kids dosing up on shows the next day.

For the parent who turns on the most entertaining kid’s show they can find to buy enough time for housework and a few calls, the invention of DVDs and Tivo make life much easier. But, I wonder, are they also making their life harder in the long run? Does a dinner made with SpongeBob on for the kids make for a rougher time  trying to eat it with them afterward?

I certainly don’t have the answers and the SpongeBob study, like most, can be countered with some critical examination. For example, the sample size was small and in an editorial accompanying the study published online Sept. 8 in the journal Pediatrics, Dr. Dimitri Christakis, a child development specialist at Seattle Children's Hospital, says that although the data seems robust enough to bolster the idea that media exposure is a public health issue, it should still be interpreted cautiously.

Too, as reported by the Associated Press, Nickelodeon spokesman David Bittler disputed the findings and said SpongeBob SquarePants is aimed at kids aged 6-11, not 4-year-olds.

"Having 60 non-diverse kids, who are not part of the show's targeted (audience), watch nine minutes of programming is questionable methodology and could not possibly provide the basis for any valid findings that parents could trust," he said.

This may be true, but I am hard pressed to find a 4-year-old who isn’t exposed to SpongeBob. Too, University of Virginia psychology professor Angeline Lillard, the lead author of the study, said Nickelodeon's hit show is far from the only culprit. She found similar problems in kids who watched other fast-paced cartoon programming.

Lillard said 4-year-olds were chosen because that age "is the heart of the period during which you see the most development" in certain self-control abilities. Whether children of other ages would be similarly affected can't be determined from this study.

The study has several other limitations too. For example, the kids weren't tested for mental function, self-control and impulsiveness before they watched TV, only after. But Lillard said none of the children had diagnosed attention problems and all got similar scores on parent evaluations of their behavior.

So, clearly more research needs to be done. But for me, it’s enough to at least raise the question of whether or not media is really helping us as parents as much as we think. Or, like the ability to text (so easy you can do it in your car!) is employing TV to keep our kids out of our hair, just for that critical moment, actually doing the opposite and making things tougher in the end?